Reflecting on My 2025 UOB Strategy

This is one of those classic slow-news-day articles. I’m currently nearing the tail end of my trip to Norway, and while my wife indulges in her usual Nordic wellness mumbo jumbo, I figured this was as good a time as any to sit down and reflect on what was, in many ways, a highly successful 2025 airline miles strategy.

For me personally, 2025 was a fantastic year for earning airline miles.

Since switching into the UOB ecosystem in Q2 2025, I was able to place much greater focus on earning Asia Miles, which fit neatly into my broader long-term strategy around Oneworld airlines. For those who have followed Refined Points for a while, you’ll know that I generally prefer flying Cathay Pacific between KL and London and, based on recent developments, I suspect some of you now understand why.

At the same time, one of my major goals was to accumulate a healthy stash of Asia Miles for multiple trips to Japan over the next few years. I touched on this extensively in my 2025 Airline Miles Strategy article, where I shamelessly reminded everyone how much I love Japan. That part, at least, remains unchanged.

The beauty of Asia Miles, of course, is that it gives me far more optionality than simply flying Cathay Pacific. It also opens up redemptions on Japan Airlines or Malaysia Airlines, assuming I’m drunk enough to do so. More importantly, I had been especially keen to try Cathay Pacific’s brand new Aria Suites Business Class, which I eventually did, and I’ve already published a full review for those of you who are tempted to try the new cabin yourself.

Cathay Pacific's Brand New Aria Suite Business Class

As such, I’ve always felt that my airline miles strategy is actually fairly straightforward despite being based in the UK. Given my flexibility in using miles, which is something I should probably write more about, I was perfectly comfortable making the UOB PRVI Miles Elite my daily driver even while living overseas. In short, I knew exactly what I was doing, and paying FX fees was never going to deter me.

An Unfortunate Shift in Strategy

As much as I enjoy talking about points and miles on this blog, the reality is that the average person is not going to overhaul their credit card strategy every single year.

Before switching into CIMB’s ecosystem in 2022 with the launch of the CIMB Travel World Elite, I had been running on the Maybank 2 Cards Premier for over five years. Likewise, I stayed with CIMB for a good two and a half years before eventually making the move to UOB, which I outlined in my 2025 Airline Miles Strategy as a deliberate and strategic shift, driven by UOB’s then-unmatched MPR rates, strong supporting benefits, and the practicality of a dual-card strategy made even more attractive by annual fee waivers.

And the truth is, once you strip away gimmicky lifestyle fluff and actually factor in fee waivers, UOB credit cards were genuinely excellent.

Even today, there still isn’t a truly viable competitor offering complimentary RM80 Grab rides twice a month with conditions that light. And judging by how aggressively UOB grew in early 2025, I’d say the average Malaysian cardholder understood that too.

Nevertheless, like many banks once the numbers start getting a little too good for cardholders, UOB slowly began scaling back several of these peripheral benefits while at the same time tightening its annual fee waiver policies.

To be clear, I don’t think this is irrational. In fact, from a purely commercial perspective, it is perfectly justifiable. When too many cardholders begin extracting value from a premium card ecosystem, and when that ecosystem also happens to offer some of the best airline miles conversion rates in the country, cost rationalisation becomes inevitable. And with UOB’s customer base skewing more toward transactors than revolvers, the margin pressure is obvious.

This, however, is where things start to get messy.

We have seen this story too many times in Malaysia. Banks launch a compelling product, create genuine excitement for one to two years, lock in customer stickiness, and then gradually dismantle the very proposition that drew people in to begin with.

There are far too many examples to list, but the more obvious ones include the Alliance Bank Visa Infinite and its once-famous 8X Timeless Bonus Points on e-wallets, and even more dramatically, the AmBank Enrich Visa Infinite, which managed to devalue its own co-brand proposition by over 50% in the span of just a year.

Is there truly anything worse than being an AmBank customer? ;)

As such, one has to ask the obvious question: are UOB’s recent revisions merely isolated cost-cutting moves, or are they early signs of more painful devaluations to come in the medium to long term?

That question became one of the defining considerations behind my 2026 Airline Miles Strategy.

My Lounge Access Dilemma

Let me sidetrack slightly and talk about lounge access, because as someone who travels frequently for work across Europe, it matters a great deal more to me than it perhaps would to the average Malaysian cardholder.

I have never shied away from saying that lounge access across UOB’s credit card lineup is, frankly, pretty poor.

The UOB PRVI Miles Elite has one of the weakest lounge access propositions in Malaysia, while the UOB Visa Infinite’s DragonPass benefit is restricted to Asia Pacific lounges only. That might sound acceptable on paper, but it quickly becomes absurd the moment you’re actually based in Europe and travelling around the region regularly.

I often found myself resorting to my tossed-aside CIMB credit cards when travelling, purely for lounge access. Yes, that’s right. I would literally place my CIMB Preferred Visa Infinite and CIMB Travel World Elite back into my wallet whenever I had a work trip, simply because I knew those cards gave me far wider lounge access than the UOB cards I was actually prioritising for spend.

And that, to me, was the core frustration.

I was spending primarily on UOB credit cards, but when it came time to travel, I had to fall back on CIMB for the actual experience. It was both hilarious and ridiculous, and says quite a lot about just how weak UOB’s lounge proposition really is. To make matters worse, with the lack of proper supplementary or guest access on these cards, I similarly had to bring back my CIMB cards whenever I travelled with my wife or other family members.

Let me be clear: lounge access alone should never be the sole deciding factor when choosing a credit card strategy.

But when the gap in lounge access quality between two banks becomes this large, it absolutely can become a decisive tiebreaker.

In my case, I was able to bring my wife and her parents into the Plaza Premium First in Hong Kong while we were travelling to Japan via Cathay Pacific and transiting through Hong Kong, all thanks to the supplementary card privileges attached to my CIMB Travel World Elite. I won’t deny that this specific experience played a major role in pushing me back toward CIMB for 2026.

A Sustenance-First Strategy

At the end of the day, the value of miles remains the core of my strategy. But for 2026, I chose long-term sustenance over short-term optimisation.

Let me break that down.

My situation is admittedly not common to the average Malaysian. I’m based in the UK and spend virtually 100% on overseas transactions. As such, a strong overseas MPR rate is of absolute importance to me. At the same time, I also value having a good local dining accelerator that my wife can use back home, allowing us to pool points together into a single broader strategy.

Today, the UOB PRVI Miles Elite gives me 0.83 MPR on overseas spend, while the CIMB Travel World Elite gives me 0.66 MPR on overseas spend together with a 1% FX fee waiver. On paper, switching back to CIMB meant accepting an immediate 25% haircut in my miles-earning capacity throughout the year.

So why did I still do it? Sustenance.

What I mean by this is simple. When you look at the broader market landscape, UOB’s credit cards are actually outliers. Their overseas MPR rates, fee waivers for new-to-bank customers, and side benefits were collectively strong enough that they sat meaningfully above the market’s natural equilibrium. And whenever a bank begins sitting too far above the rest of the field, history tells us the gap usually closes one way: through devaluation.

That is what made me uncomfortable.

With the recent revisions already chipping away at the overall proposition, it became increasingly difficult for me to believe that UOB’s existing miles earning structure would remain untouched over the longer term. In other words, I began to question whether I was optimising around a proposition that was simply too good to remain intact.

Furthermore, I had to weigh whether taking a 25% reduction in miles earning power was worth gaining exposure to ten additional airline transfer partners. CIMB gives me 13 airline conversion partners compared to UOB’s three, and when framed that way, the decision was actually very easy.

Yes, I would earn fewer miles per Ringgit. But I would be earning into a more durable ecosystem with materially greater flexibility and, in my view, a lower risk of strategic deterioration.

The Annual Fee Dilemma

Annual fees are always a problem, especially when the utility of a card starts drifting away from the price you’re expected to justify.

This is where the UOB strategy starts to wobble.

With stricter annual fee waiver policies being implemented, the viability of maintaining a two-card UOB strategy weakened significantly. And the very idea of paying upwards of RM1,200 a year across two cards was, to put it mildly, rather absurd.

I should mention that because of my new-to-bank relationship with UOB, I was personally insulated from this for another two years and would likely have continued enjoying annual fee waivers until at least 2028.

But that was not really the point.

At the same time, CIMB happened to be running an annual fee waiver campaign where a 100% waiver required only RM120,000 in spend instead of the usual RM240,000. That was effectively the nail in the coffin for my UOB strategy. My CIMB Preferred Visa Infinite is already free-for-life, and with a much easier waiver path now available for the CIMB Travel World Elite, it began to feel as though everything was quietly falling into place for an eventual switch.

And yes, I’ll admit it did feel slightly creepy. Was this a deliberate move by CIMB to capture market share in early 2026 just as the wheels were beginning to come off for UOB? I honestly wouldn’t rule it out.

That said, I should be fair here.

If you are currently on a dual-card UOB strategy and can comfortably meet the relevant spend thresholds to justify a waiver, you are still in decent shape to continue with that setup for now, at least until the next major change arrives, whether that comes in the form of an outright devaluation or simply the growing pain of living with weaker travel benefits.

What About the Standard Chartered Beyond Visa Infinite?

This was a question I received quite a lot via email after the Standard Chartered Beyond Visa Infinite launched last month.

In hindsight, many readers suggested that the Standard Chartered Beyond Visa Infinite could carve out a role as an overseas-focused travel credit card, especially for someone based abroad or travelling often. On paper, I was practically the perfect candidate for this. I’m based in the UK, I spend almost entirely overseas, and I already maintain a Standard Chartered Priority Banking relationship.

Standard Chartered Beyond Visa Infinite Miles Earning Rates

In fact, I’m due to receive my Beyond Visa Infinite very soon.

However, there was one key flaw in the strategy that meant I simply could not make it work, no matter how I looked at it.

The Beyond Visa Infinite is excellent for overseas dining and shopping. It is far less compelling for someone who is effectively a local resident in a foreign city.

To recap, the card earns 0.71 MPR on general overseas spend, but 1.42 MPR on overseas dining and shopping. That is fantastic if you are travelling. It is much less impressive if your real monthly reality consists of spending on M&S Food, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and other ordinary day-to-day necessities.

Literally my second home

In other words, I would have earned only 0.71 MPR on a very large portion of my actual recurring expenses, which effectively makes the Beyond Visa Infinite a weaker version of my previous UOB strategy, not a better one.

This would be a completely different conversation if I were spending heavily on restaurants and retail in London every month. But I’m not. My pattern is far more boring and far more practical than that.

And credit card strategies, if they are to be sustainable, need to reflect real life rather than fantasy spending categories.

Final Thoughts

If I’m being completely honest, I genuinely wanted UOB to succeed.

In many respects, UOB brought something refreshing to the Malaysian airline miles landscape. Its mechanics were fast, its dual-card setup made strategic sense, and for a brief moment, it felt like one of the few banks that truly understood how serious miles collectors actually think. That is precisely why this recent downward trend feels so disappointing.

What makes the situation more interesting, however, is that this is not really a full-blown devaluation story.

UOB has not come out and detonated its rewards structure in the dramatic fashion we have seen from other banks. In fact, one could argue that UOB has tried to do something commercially intelligent by touching almost everything except the core rewards engine. It has tightened waiver policies, recalibrated side benefits, scaled back fringe privileges, and tried to make the overall proposition more financially sustainable without outright gutting the miles side of the equation.

On paper, that sounds smart.

In practice, it is not working, at least from a consumer's perspective.

The reason is simple: premium cardholders do not evaluate value through rewards alone. They evaluate the total ecosystem. Lounge access matters. Supplementary privileges matter. Fee sustainability matters. The ease of holding multiple cards matters. The ability to justify the strategy year after year matters. Once those surrounding pillars begin to weaken, people quickly realise that value extends far beyond MPR alone. And when that happens, even a bank that has technically preserved its rewards structure can still end up losing strategic relevance.

That, to me, is where UOB’s current approach is backfiring.

Many banks in Malaysia cut too aggressively and watch customers flee almost immediately. UOB is not exactly doing that. Instead, it is trying to be clever and surgical, but the problem is that the market can still see the proposition becoming less coherent over time. And once a strategy stops feeling coherent, no amount of cleverness on the margins can fully save it.

Still, the airline miles landscape in Malaysia changes ridiculously fast.

A bank can go from hero to afterthought in twelve months, and just as quickly re-enter the conversation with one or two smart moves. So while I’m stepping away from UOB for now, I certainly would not write them off entirely. If anything, I’d argue that UOB remains one of the few banks with the scale, mechanics, and product DNA to rise back up again in the near future should a few interesting developments land.

And in this game, that is exactly why nothing is ever truly permanent.